Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

THE GOATS MARCH

Now we've got them just where they want us!

–admiral james tiberius kirk

While Captain Ahab was trying to Illuminate Dr. Dashwood at noon in San Francisco, and Justin Case was dialing the Saudi Arabian consulate at 3 P.M. in New York, a man named Francois Loup-Garou was finding a Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg in Paris, where it was already late evening.

Naturally, he was a bit startled.

M. Loup-Garou was, like all French intellectuals, a rationalist-virtually a Cartesian. Of course, as the founder of the Neo-Surrealist movement in art, he was officially an irrationalist; but, like all Gallic irrationalists, especially the Existentialists, he was exquisitely rational about his irrationality. He knew there was some explanation of how the Rehnquist had gotten into the Lobster Newburg, but for once in his life he preferred being an irrational rationalist rather than an irrational rationalist. He just did not care to think about the explanation of how a Rehnquist gets into a Lobster Newburg. Who, after all, wants to contemplate such ideas as maddened chefs having at each other with meat cleavers, or more exotic hypotheses, such anthropophagy or voodoo rituals in the kitchen?

The distasteful incident occurred at a dinner party given by the famous American physicist James Earl Carter. Dr. Carter had recently won the Nobel Prize for his demonstration that the multiworld of Everett-Wheeler-Graham was the only consistent (noncontradictory; paradox-free) interpretation of the Schrodinger wave equations of quantum mechanics. He was celebrating by spending a month in Paris and meeting every possible international celebrity. The dinner guests this evening, for instance, included an inscrutable Japanese monk, a very scrutable German novelist, a famous Swedish film director, three French philosophers, a Swiss theologian, two English neurologists, the notorious Eva Gebloomenkraft (the Terror of the Jet Set, as the newspapers called her), an Austrian psychiatrist, Francois Loup-Garou himself, and four goats. The goats had been brought to the party by Loup-Garou, who was working hard at promoting Neo-Surrealisme by establishing himself as a newsworthy eccentric. "The goats go everywhere with me," he said firmly at the door. "They are a reminder of our earthy roots." It wasn't nearly as good as de Nerval walking a lobster on the boulevard, but it did get into a few newspapers the next day; and, after the effect had been established, Loup-Garou genially agreed to having the goats housed in the pantry during dinner.

As the guests settled themselves at the table, one of the English neurologists, Dr. Axon-a jovial, red-cheeked man who probably hunted as a hobby-asked Dr. Carter, "Does your theory actually propose that there are real tangible universes on all sides of us in hyperspace?"

"In superspace," Carter corrected genially. "Yay-us," he added blandly. "There are millions of such universes. Or to be more precise, there are about 10100 of them. Ah only refer to possible universes," he explained quickly, lest anybody think his theory was extravagant.

"Some more wine heah," Carter's brother said loudly. "Ah think you've had enough, Bill-uh," Carter muttered in an undertone.

"Do you think President Kennedy will get the space-cities program through Congress, now that the space factories are paying for themselves?" asked the other English neurologist, a pale, saturnine man named Dr. Dendrite.

"Ah don't understand politics," James Earl Carter said. "Ahm a scientist."

"Some MORE WINE heah," Carter's brother repeated. "Then there are universes in which I was never born." Dr. Axon pursued his own line of thought.

"There are universes in which John Baez became a general instead of a folk singer," Carter said easily. "Ah suppose he would be equally vehement about nuking people as he now is about not nuking them. If it's a possible universe, it exists. The equations say so. All ah've done, really, is to show that any other interpretation of the equations is contradictory."

"Somebody ought to psychoanalyze the physicists," the Austrian psychiatrist muttered to the Swedish film director.

"It's like the Buddhist concept of karma," the Swedish film director said. "We all get to play every role, somewhere in hyperspace."

"Superspace," Carter corrected again.

"Then there's a universe where Kennedy is a physicist," Eva Gebloomenkraft said, "and you're President of Unistat."

"Well, Carter said with his genial smile, "ah hope ah could get along with the people who run the country. What do they call themselves-the Triangular Connection?"

"I don't care whether this theory is true or not," the German novelist pronounced. "As a metaphor, it is perfect. We all live in parallel universes. I am Faust in my universe, and the rest of you are all extras or walk-ons. But each of you is Faust in his universe, and I am an extra-maybe just a spear carrier."

But by this time the wineglasses had been refilled several times and everybody was getting more relaxed, especially the physicist's brother, Billy, who was heard reciting to Ms. Gebloomenkraft, "Who Burgered? Tom Burgered! Bullburger! Who Burgered?"

"… the Second Oswald… in Hong Kong…" somebody was muttering at the other end of the table.

"In some universe maybe Schiller didn't write Faust at all…"

"I wonder," Dendrite said, "if there's a universe where Pope Stephen became a singer instead of a priest."

"Everyboduh knew that 'Who Burgered?' routine when we were growing up in Georgia," Billy was saying.

"Verdammte publishers," the German novelist was telling the Swiss theologian. "They're all thieves."

"Did somebody mention Pope Stephen?" the theologian asked.

"Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander," the psychiatrist chortled.

"They stay up nights thinking of new ways to cheat their writers," the novelist rambled on, now evidently addressing his wineglass, since nobody else was listening to him.

"I'd like to know who started all those rumors about Pope Stephen," the theologian fumed.

"I have written a poem commemorating your great discovery," Francois Loup-Garou told Dr. Carter, hacking his way into a pause in the conversation.

"A poem about me? In French?" Carter was enthused. "Ah love French poetry, especially RAM-BOW."

"No," Loup-Garou said, "in your honor, I have written it in English." Actually, he had written it in English to get even with T. S. Eliot, who had written a few rondels in French.

"Ah wonder if you could recite it," Carter prompted.

"Certainly," said Loup-Garou. And he began to declaim:

Schrodinger's cat and Wigner's friend

Cause us problems without end

The cat is both alive and dead

In the math that's in our head

And the regression of Von Neumann

Never ceases to annoy Man

The uncertainty just has no end

Until Wigner goes to tell his friend

For, until the friend receives the news

That the cat still purrs and mews

The cat remains (suspended Fate!)

In some formal Eigenstate

"Some MORE WINE heah!" Carter's brother bellowed at the butler.

Loup-Garou frowned and went on:

But if Wigner makes a beeline

To report the now-dead feline

All the friend can really know

Is just one branch of time's swift flow

For in Carter's multispace

Every time-branch has its place

So the cat remains alive

In the half cases (That's.5)

Lead us not to Copenhagen,

Nor to Shylock, nor to Fagin:

"The result's not parsimonious!"

Yet I find it quite harmonious

Nobody understood this except Dr. Carter himself, but he was so moved that his eyes watered a bit. "Ahm honored," he kept saying, shaking his head. "To have a poem written about me by a French artist in English. …"

But at this point the chef exploded into the room, haggard and wild-eyed. "The goats!" he cried. "They march!"

And indeed it was true; the goats had gotten out of the pantry. It took ten minutes, and a great deal of exertion for both the house staff and the guests, before the animals were rounded up and herded back to captivity.

Everybody was breathing a bit heavily by then, and the Austrian psychiatrist muttered something about "artistic temperament," which Loup-Garou unfortunately overheard.

"There is nothing esoteric about the artistic temperament," he replied, flatly and dogmatically. "The real mystery-and the tragedy of humanity-is that so many lack esthetic sensibility. I sometimes believe the legend that there are robots among us, passing themselves off as human beings."

"That's absurd," Dr. Axon said. "If I were to claim that everybody should be a neurologist, you would all quite properly regard that as an eccentricity. Yet when an artist says we should all be artists, we are apt to agree, a bit sheepishly. And if a religious person says we should all be religious, we not only agree, but feel a bit guilty about our shortcomings in that department. Well, I've never had an artistic or religious impulse in my life, and I'm not ashamed of the fact."

"Research is your art and your religion," said the Japanese monk, speaking for the first time. "What a person truly is, in any universe, is the Buddha Nature," he added blandly. He knew that he existed in this continuum only to make that one Dharma revelation, so he immediately resumed his impassive silence.

The others decided that the monk's remarks made no sense.

"What do you think, Dr. Axon," Loup-Garou asked rhetorically, "if only a few people had sex in their lives, and the majority were, not merely ascetics, but simply unaware of sex-deaf, dumb, and blind to the erotic side of life? Would you not think that was at least a little bit odd, a symptom, perhaps, of some pathology? ArrrrrrrrrghH!"

He had discovered the Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg.

And the chef arrived from the kitchen, exasperated as only a French chef can be exasperated. "The goats!" he cried. "Once again it is that they march!"

But Loup-Garou was still going "arrrgh," like a man with the death rattle.

"What is it?" Ms. Gebloomenkraft asked him, her eyes full of motherly concern.

"It's nothing-nothing," Loup-Garou gasped. "Just a touch of heartburn." He was still in shock, thinking the Rehnquist might be a hallucination. But if you were naive enough to talk about hallucinations, the results might be rubber sheets, electroshock, windows with bars on them.

"The goats," the chef repeated, with emphasis. "They will not be governed. They march again, I tell you!"

Loup-Garou took another peek. The Rehnquist was still there. It was a great big one-ithyphallique, as the anthropologists would say. This was Madness, or else something unspeakable was afoot.

Billy began to sing, off key:

Four goats and ME,

They came to TEA,

They came to STAY,

They stayed all DAY,

Oh, my! Oh, me!

Four goats and ME!

At this point he fell face down in his Lobster Newburg.

"Bill-uh isn't accustomed to fine French wines," Dr. Carter said, his genial smile beginning to look just a bit forced.